ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE NETWORK IRELAND CONFERENCE
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE NETWORK IRELAND CONFERENCE ‘EXPLORING OUR E-FUTURE’
Is mór an onóir agus pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh ar maidin chun an chomhdháil seo a oscailt go hoifigiúil. Go raibh maith agaibh as fáilte fíorchaoin a chur romham.
It is a great pleasure to join you here this morning to officially open this conference on behalf of Network Ireland. I would like to particularly commend you on your interesting and timely choice of theme. We have already taken the first steps on this new adventure, in which so many aspects of all our lives will be profoundly influenced by the new technologies of communication. Yet, like new developments in other fields which seek to push out the boundaries, our understanding of the social and ethical implications tends to lag behind the pace of technological change. This conference provides a welcome opportunity draw breath and explore some of those issues, in particular, our capacity to be drivers of change towards a destination of our choosing, and not just passengers on a journey into the unknown.
It is of huge significance that the revolution which these new technologies are unleashing in work practices, social interaction, commercial dealings and family life, comes at a time when women are taking their rightful place in so many spheres of Irish life, not least the business world. The old power structures which excluded women for so long, confining them to rigidly prescribed roles and limited horizons are crumbling. New opportunities in education and employment have been seized with enthusiasm by women, transforming their expectations and self-confidence as individuals but also, and crucially, radically transforming the potential of family, of community, of country. Their genius, their energy has flowed much more freely than ever before into the human energy grid and we who have been privileged to observe the manifest uplift in economic, social and political fortunes, we know and know profoundly that a society which relies on only half its resources can expect to realise only half of its potential. That knowledge imbues us with unbounded anticipation of a future when the potential of each human being will blossom to its fullest extent, and an impatience to reach that future sooner rather than later.
While we have already achieved much, we have still only scratched the surface of what is possible. We take enormous pride in what women of this generation have achieved on an individual basis. But no matter how great the personal endeavour and success of each person, there is a level of synergy that we are missing out on if we all stay in our own boxes, failing to tap into each other’s insights and experience. There is an additional energy that arises when individual efforts are channelled into a common pool. We have all felt it, we have all drawn from it. It can be as simple as knowing there is someone we can call on, someone who will give us the benefit of their experience or bolster our confidence at a crucial time. It can be as complex as trading experience and wisdom and discovering that things we only half knew or intuited had a matching half in someone else, and we felt the power of these two things as they docked and made a completely new kind of sense to us. In short, it is about taking on board the old Irish saying ‘Ar scath a chéile a mhaireann na daoine’ – we live in each other’s shadow. We can achieve only so much by working on our own. Our collective capacity to shape the future is a power of a different order entirely.
That is where organizations like Network Ireland come into their own, because you provide the power grid through which that energy can be conducted. And never before have the seeds of your work been sown on such fertile ground. Now, the capacity of women to communicate with each other, to build partnerships and forge alliances, has been immeasurably strengthened by the power of the Internet, an electronic network which underpins and enriches traditional human networks such as Network Ireland. It puts women in touch with each other in a way that was never possible before; it provides options in terms of teleworking and distance education that until the very recent past, seemed to belong solely to the realms of science fiction.
Now that fiction has become fact. The future promises to be a time of great opportunity and great change, especially for women. In the past, women’s success was achieved against the background of a framework of structures, rules, attitudes and ways of looking at the world that had been shaped with little or no input from them. This electronic world of the future and increasingly of the present is so new and changes so quickly that many of those old rules which inhibited women no longer apply. We are entering uncharted territory, and we are entering it at a time when women are ideally placed to be among its most adventurous pioneers. We have an opportunity to write a new script for a joint enterprise in which the giftedness of each of us, whether male or female is fully respected, fully encouraged and where there is recognition that we each hold an essential piece of the jigsaw in creating a more humanly decent future for all.
Such a future does not happen by chance. Opportunities can so easily slip away unless you have people who are willing to seize them with both hands and to galvanise others to do the same, who cajole, persuade, and inspire, so that possibility becomes lived reality. That is what Network Ireland is about – creating a channel for provoking thought, exchanging ideas, initiating action, supporting co-operation. I warmly commend all of you who have worked to make this organization such a vibrant network of support among women all across this island, North and South. The new technologies are teaching us that borders need not be barricades but crossing points, that diversity need not lead to disrespect or indifference but instead endless fascination with each other and our capacity to both teach each other and learn from each other precisely because we are indeed different.
I congratulate you on this fascinating conference which looks to the future, a future which for all our differences whether of political perspective or identity, we dare to have a shared ambition for. That ambition is to ensure that the e in our e-future stands for equality of opportunity. I wish you every success with your deliberations.
Thank you.